Wednesday, January 17, 2007

It mid January and it has finally snowed!! I went skiing on New Years Day (or was it the 2nd? I can't remember) and the snow was okay (though all man-made) on the green and some blue runs, but the blacks were ridiculous with either no snow or ice (I guess they've been focusing on snow making for the easy & groomable runs first). I went down a chute where I literally should have been wearing ice skates. The ice was smooth and polished as if the zamboni had just been there. I'm lucky to be here talking about it.

Of course the snow means I just had to go dig my car out because they're plowing the side of the street my car was parked on. Definitely not San Francisco. And San Francisco tires are what are on my car. Okay, they're all-season radials, but let's call them "performance-oriented" all-season radials, so it's going to be scary!!

Let's see, what else is new? Hmmm...

I'm back getting some exercise with hockey and climbing both happening weekly. Some jerk defenseman last week at hockey threatened to take me out because I was getting a jump on him and got two breakaways. Now seriously, I don't take hockey too seriously, but someone coming up to me and telling me he was going after me with the intention of taking a penalty and hurting me if I cherry picked and got behind him again ticked me off (out strategy for the game was to keep a winger at or above the blue line at all times). So a few plays later I very innocently laid my shoulder into him in front of the net - a nice solid and clean mid ice bump, not even a hit, but possibly enough to get me a penalty (I should mention we're in a non-hitting league). Of course we can all imagine the brain power of someone who was giving threats in the first place, so he came up looking for a fight and calling me a girl (though he was the one lying on the ice and going on, somehow I was being a girl - sorry for the sexisms here). Ummm... yeah, good one.

But it gets better. I had figured I was going to take a penalty, but figured he'd go with me. It turns out largely because I kept my cool and he was himself that he gets a penalty and I don't. So all is good from point of view. He doesn't like this however and starts going ballistic on the bench. And then a play later there's another minor hit on the ice (not involving me) and he starts going crazy in the penalty box because my teammate did the hit and doesn't get a penalty. So a few seconds into his 2nd tantrum he gets booted from the game. We've got a real winner here I tell you. Anyway, I was quite happy with myself :)

Since I'm going on about sports... I've been climbing with a couple new people and one of them wanted to do their lead test. I said I'd belay for him, but little did I know that they don't distinguish between lead belay and lead here, so I got stuck doing my lead test. Of course I haven't lead squat in over a year, never mind that I've barely been climbing at all! Turns out I did fine on my lead climb (clips weren't the smoothest ever), but he didn't like my lead belaying. He thinks I'm too easy going and don't pay enough attention to small details and he thinks I leave too much slack which I completely disagree with (while belaying I was thinking I was keeping him too tight). It kind of annoys me how different gyms/people are so particular yet inconsistent. Anyway, he reviewed my belaying before the other guy belayed so the other guy knew what he was looking for and had no problems. And I took a fall so the other guy could pass but the other guy passed without having to take a fall? What's up with that? So there's a bunch of lead climbers climbing who've maybe never taken a fall?

So does this make those of you who I've belayed scared or what!! But don't worry, I've caught several really good lead falls and I'm still arrogant and full of myself. Of the latter, I'm sure none of you had any doubt.